These days one never knows when prominent individuals with important intelligence whether it was a rendition or a defection. We likely never will know. New that he was a defecting spy for Mossad may well be just disinformation to quiet the furer. At any rate, Iranian counsels for Iraq remain in US custody and many other Iranians have dissappeared all over Iraq.
Are we seeing an escalation of a covert war? I think so.
The First Post
According to Western intelligence sources, over the past four months more than a dozen Iranian agents operating undercover inside Iraq have been 'neutralised' - detained, jailed, possibly abducted, perhaps induced to defect - and Tehran is becoming badly rattled.
One Iranian diplomat was kidnapped in broad daylight in the centre of Baghdad by gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniform and driving cars with official plates. Five more Iranians were rounded up in a swoop by US troops on their 'liaison office' in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil. A senior officer from Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard corps has been arrested in the south of Iraq and has not been seen again.
On top of these disappearing acts, there are two mysteries at home in Iran. The disappearance of the retired Revolutionary Guard general and former deputy defence minister Ali Reza Asghari - reported in The First Post on March 13 - is still unresolved. Now it transpires that the day after Asghari was posted missing in Istanbul, another key official, intelligence coordinator General Mohammed Sultani, reportedly vanished en route to inspect an Iranian listening post in the port of Bandar Abbas.
For the hardliners who hold the balance of power in Tehran, this alarming sequence of events is easily explained. Coalition forces in Iraq are intensifying the battle to roll up the clandestine intelligence networks through which Iran orchestrates Iraq's radical Shia militia.
According to Israeli intelligence sources, a decision was taken at the highest political level in Iran to counter the coalition offensive by reverting to the tried and trusted policy of taking hostages as
bargaining chips.
The seizure by Iran of the 15 Royal Navy personnel last Friday was not their first success. Early in January an audacious raid, initially reported as a routine clash, was launched on the headquarters of the provincial governor in the Iraqi city of Karbala, where a high-level meeting between Iraqi and US officials was happening.
A group of around a dozen commandos wearing US uniforms and driving off-road vehicles similar to those used by coalition forces bluffed their way past the compound security. The attackers, who spoke to Iraqi guards in English, headed straight for the Americans' quarters and snatched four US soldiers before making their getaway.
With pursuers closing in, the convoy halted and the handcuffed Americans were executed in cold blood. Coalition intelligence concluded that the raid's meticulousplanning, far beyond the known capacity of any of Iraq's home-grown militias, bore all the hallmarks of an operation by Iranian intelligence.
Friday's capture of the 15 sailors and marines from HMS Cornwall seemingly confirms that Iran is adopting the strategy initiated during the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s, when Westerners in Beirut, such as William Buckley (left), were kidnapped by Hezbollah, with the aid and encouragement of the Shia group's Revolutionary Guard advisers. A recent article in the weekly paper that speaks for the Guards warned that Iran has "the ability to capture a nice bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks".
It's entirely feasible that before any release of the Navy personnel can be negotiated, Tehran will demand the release of the five Iranians seized by US troops in Irbil.
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